Capacity Building Through Collaborations - Among Funders and Beyond

Some foundations are teaming up to address capacity-building challenges, sharing issues, problems, and opportunities that come along in an area of common interest.

Funders can approach collaboration in a number of ways, from joining forces to explore what collective funding might yield, to pooling resources in a fund.

Some collaborative funder efforts are focused on strengthening nonprofit organizational effectiveness, such as helping nonprofits gain access to capacity-building resources.

Others focus on building nonprofit capacity to impact issues funders collectively care about, such as child poverty, public education reform, grassroots community leadership development, local philanthropy field building, and social innovation.

Some funder collaborations are managed and led by intermediaries. Some represent partnerships through which funders re-grant through other funders.

Some of these collaborations are bringing in other sectors, including industry and government, to address problems as well as innovate solutions that can position nonprofits for even greater success.

Takeaways are critical, bite-sized resources either excerpted from our guides or written by GrantCraft using the guide's research data or themes post-publication. Attribution is given if the takeaway is a quotation.